ABSTRACT
The Olympic Games, as a topic, metaphor, and sporting theme, increasingly received attention in English literature as the eighteenth century progressed. The available classical texts relied more upon poetic license than historical accuracy, enabling authors to reimagine Pan-Hellenic traditions. At the same time, Christian perceptions of classical works celebrating pagan sport and athleticism remained against the spread of the specialist study of antiquity. The ancient Olympic or Olympian Games were the largest of four Pan-Hellenic celebrations for which records date back to 776 BC but were likely to have had much older traditions. The four-year cycle of the festivals, held annually in mid-summer, was termed an Olympiad. 1 In year one, this sequence involved the Pythian Games, dedicated to Apollo and staged at Delphi. The second year, the Nemean Games were devoted to Zeus, at Nemea. The Isthmian Games, pledged to Poseidon, followed at Corinth. The largest and most significant, the Olympic Games took place every four years, near the town of Elis, in the northwestern part of the Peloponnese, on a walled site about a kilometer square called Olympia, and were also devoted to Zeus. 2
